Patrick Smith

Patrick Smith (born 1972 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) is an American animator and YouTuber. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). His formative years were spent as a storyboard artist for Walt Disney, and animation director for MTV's Daria and the Emmy-nominated Downtown. Smith spent five years in Singapore as a professor at the graduate film program for New York University Tisch School of the Arts, under artistic director/filmmaker Oliver Stone. His 2019 film "Pour 585" is one of the 5 most viewed Animated Shorts on YouTube, and Smith is one of the few YouTubers that retains a consistent film festival release schedule, his films have screened at Tribeca Film Festival, Slamdance, Ottawa, and Annecy, and hundreds of other festivals world-wide. His most recent stop motion short "Beyond Noh" is currently part of the acclaimed traveling showcase "The Animation Show of Shows." Patrick is a fellow of the New York Foundation of the Arts and a curator for multiple international film and animation festivals. The beginning of his animation career has been told by himself like this:

In 1994, I was in college, and one night decided to animate something strange. I didn't know how to draw, let alone animate, so I just did something abstract. A friend of mine told me I should put an logo on it and send it to MTV. So I mailed a VHS of it to "MTV Networks" the address I got from the phone book. About two weeks later I got a call from a guy named Abbey, who said that they wanted to buy it. I remember the day he called, because it was the same day that I got my rejection letter from Cal Arts. I re-animated the same thing, a bit tighter. The spot won a BDA award (Broadcast Design Association) and a Jury Prize at the 1995 Holland Animation Festival. After I finished the ID, MTV offered me a job on Beavis and Butt-Head, which was my first ever studio job, and which brought me to New York City.

His directorial debut was for the Emmy-nominated series Downtown, continuing on to direct the popular animated series Daria. Since then he has directed a handful of short films which earned him much reputation at film festivals worldwide as well as numerous awards. Smith and his studio produced the animated series Blank on Blank for PBS Digital Studios, an innovative animated show that visually illustrates rare audio interviews of famous artists, actors and musicians.

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